celebrating poetry for life

I have carried you since you were born; I have taken care of you since birth. Even when you are old, I will be the same. Even when your hair has turned gray, I will take care of you. I made you, and I will take care of you.

Isaiah 46: 3-4 (New Century Version)

Statement Concerning Ethnic Identity

For several years, I have been teaching a writing course with the theme of “History, Memory, and Identity,” which, among other things, examines the autobiographies of men and women of mixed ethnicity. One writer, James McBride, has a Polish-Jewish mother and an African-American father. Another, Louis Owens, has a Cherokee-Choctaw and Irish ancestry, and still another, Vickie Smith-Foston, has an Armenian heritage though she was told all her life that she was of French and Italian descent. These writers’ lives prove what I have come to believe, namely, that ethnic identity is genetically inherited, socially constructed, and personally determined. Over the years, I have come to see my own ethnic identity in these terms.

Recently, my father and one of my mother’s sisters took DNA tests, and I learned some surprising things about my family’s ethnic heritage. I had always believed that, on my mother’s side, we were English and Irish. My mother’s family has always been proud of that lineage. I had been told that, on my father’s side, we were English, Pennsylvania Dutch (German), Cherokee, and probably Black from West Africa. It turns out to be true that I am mostly English and Irish on my mother’s side, but also Western European (i.e., French and/or German) with about 10% of our blood being a mixture of Finnish, Russian, Eastern European, Spanish, and Scandinavian. I never knew I had such genetic diversity from my mother! The DNA test my father took was less specific, but it turns about that we are 98.5% Northwestern European on his side: English and Irish (58.2%) and French and German (16.3%) with less than 2% of the genetic ancestry from Scandinavia and less than 1% from East Asian or Native American peoples. This was a far cry from what I had been told throughout my life. These revelations got me thinking about how American families represent themselves to themselves and to society.

At some point in the not-so-distant past, my mother’s family began to hide some of their heritage, only telling the next generation that they were from the British Isles. They could certainly pass as such. But that left out the French and (doubtless) German blood, perhaps purposefully during the WWI and WWII eras when America was at war with Germany. Needless to say, I’ve never heard the least hint from my mother’s family that we had roots in Finland, Russia, Eastern Europe or Spain – let alone Scandinavia! But I value of this knowledge, even though it is coming to me late in life and changing my understanding of my ethnic identity. I’ve studied the languages and literatures of these countries, and it is very interesting to realize I have family that comes them. I come from them.

My father’s family clearly chose a different approach to immigration and the American experience: not denial of origins, but filiation with other ethnic minority groups. Since I was a very young girl, I have been told that my great grandmother, Della Rimmer Beal, was a Cherokee woman from North Carolina. (“Rimmer” is actually an occupational name referring to a poet or a minstrel; it entered the English language from the Old French, “rymour.”) I was also told that my great-great-grandfather, William Frederick Baldwin, was a stableman for Queen Victoria who later eloped with one of her African servants, Christine Anne Marie Bigg. I don’t know why I was told so if these stories were not true. But perhaps, because my grandfather was from North Carolina and moved his family West, there was a desire in him or his children to create meaningful distance from the formerly slave-holding South: to identify with those who had been victimized rather than those who had done the victimizing. As sociologists have shown, some U.S. citizens say that they have Native blood to have a more valid claim to being “American,” with roots in the country even before the Pilgrims came. I never suspected my father’s family might be a part of that trend! Unless that less than 1% turns out to be Cherokee blood, however, apparently, the family was a part of it. I must say that it was very odd for me to go to bed one night a few months ago with an inwardly clear picture of my ethnic identity, which included a Native heritage, and then wake up the next morning without it.

Equally interesting to me is the fact that I never heard a whisper that I was Irish on my father’s side, only English. I thought all my Irish blood came from my mother. But families in America had reason to deny their Irish heritage, too, as Irish immigrants have faced a history of discrimination here.

That being said, I have always known that I have a rich heritage from my parents. My father’s surname, Beal, is an English name derived from the Old French word meaning beautiful or handsome (a word which occurs, for example, in the writings of the twelfth-century poet, Marie de France). My father’s mother’s maiden name, Baldwin, is Old English for bold friend. My mother’s maiden name, Bryan, is Irish and means strength, virtue, and honor. Her mother’s maiden name, Taylor, is a Middle English variant spelling of a word comparable in meaning to the modern English word “tailor.” Perhaps it is no surprise that my grandmother, Frances Taylor Bryan, was an expert seamstress who could sew a straight seam by hand at age three.

Our family genealogists, my father’s sister, Cheryl Beal, M.A., and Clark L. Bryan, my maternal grandfather’s second cousin, have made interesting discoveries about our genetic inheritance. My father’s family, the Beals and the Baldwins, immigrated to America from England (and, apparently, Ireland) in the nineteenth century. My mother’s family, the Bryans and the Taylors, immigrated to America before the American Revolution. William Smith Bryan, a rebellious Irish prince, attempted to seize the Irish Crown during the Interregnum when the Puritans ruled England, but Oliver Cromwell defeated him and exiled him to Virginia in 1650. We are also related to William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), a politician and a lawyer who served as Secretary of State in President Woodrow Wilson’s administration and famously argued for Prohibition and against the teaching of Darwinism in public schools in the Scopes “Monkey” Trial. Of the Taylors in our family ancestry, Zachary “Old Rough and Ready” Taylor is the most notable. He was a commander of the army of the Rio Grande, a major general during the Mexican-American War, and the twelfth President of the United States (1849-50).

Although my genetic inheritance is primarily English and Irish, the ethnic identity of my immediate family is more complex. My family members have made choices that demonstrate how ethnic identity is not only genetically inherited but also personally determined. When I was a child, my parents divorced, and both remarried. My father’s wife, Terrée Lynn Larsen Cordova, is the daughter of a Swiss-Danish woman and a Spanish-American man. She grew up listening to her grandparents speaking German and Spanish. My mother’s husband, Rudolf Joseph Holthuis, is a first-generation Dutch immigrant to the United States, and his family spoke Dutch and English in their home.

When these two parents came into my life, I became a part of the Cordova and Holthuis extended families, and my sense of ethnic identity was enlarged as a result. In addition to English, I learned to speak Spanish and a few words of Dutch. As a teenager, I identified with the Cordova side of my family. I remember sitting with my abuelita, Ikie Nora Nieto Cordova, in the convalescent hospital when she was recovering from a stroke. I was experiencing an inward frustration that I felt culturally Latina but had no known Spanish blood in my veins. Of course, I do have Spanish heritage from my own mother, but at that time, I didn’t know it. Ikie told me then, “Just forget English. You can be Spanish.” Her love showed me that ethnic identity is “twin-skin” to linguistic identity, as Gloria Anzaldúa has written, and it is not only inherited but also socially constructed by our families. Her words made me feel accepted as part of her family and motivated me to learn the Spanish language, la idioma del cielo, and make it my own.

Interestingly, by their personally-determined marriage choices, my brothers and sisters have embraced partners with ethnic identities that expand our family’s ethnic identity. My brother James is married to Bricia Villanueva, a Mexican woman who recently became a naturalized American citizen, and they speak Spanish and English in their home. My brother Abraham is married to Heather Smith, the daughter of a white woman and a Black man. Their children, my neice Ada and nephews Daniel and Isaac, consequently have a genetically and culturally rich ethnic heritage. My sister Anne is married to an African American, Jeremy Grant, and together they have two beautiful daughters, Karisse and Katrina. My brother Andrew is married to a Filipina American, Debbie, and they have a son, Elijah. My sister Erin is married to a Filipino American man, John Villaluna, and they have a son, Ryan. Both Elijah and Ryan have Filipino heritage, and they are my own dear nephews! Like many members of my family, I have been to the Philippines. While I was there, I served as a midwife at a birth center in Mindinao, and I helped to welcome many sweet babies into the world. I recognize the Tagalog and Visayan languages when I hear them, and I feel a deep love and sense of connection to the Philippine Islands because I have family from there and I myself have lived there.

Like my siblings, I have made choices which have affirmed and expanded our family’s ethnic identity. I have made friends who have chosen me in turn to be a godmother to their children. Though I am not West African by blood, four of my seven godchildren are of the Ga people of Ghana, West Africa. I have been to Ghana four times, and I have lived in Uganda, East Africa, and served there as a midwife. So I feel a deep sense of connection with Ghanaians, Ugandans, and people from other African nations. Two other godchildren of mine have an African-American grandfather. Still another godchild is Guatemalan; she and I share a Spanish heritage. I have been to Central America, and I plan to go back. My friendships have changed my identity, and my midwifery work has changed my sense of self in the world.

The combination my genetic inheritance, social situation, and personal choices has caused people to perceive my ethnic identity in many different ways. The variety can be accounted for not only on the basis of where I was and what language I was speaking at the time, but also on the basis of the clothes I was wearing, the children I was caring for, and the verbal and written gestures I made expressing aspects of my ethnic identity. I have been taken for an American, an English, an Irish, a French, a German, a Swiss, a Swedish, a Spanish, an East Indian, and an African woman. Although I have been so identified by others, I tend to identify ethnically with those cultures that have given me the gift of their languages.

My first second language, Spanish, opened up the world of my native California, the American Southwest, and the country of Mexico to me at a young age. When I learned French, I traveled to France and stayed with the Poucherets, by whom I was accepted as a part of the family. Because of a long personal acquaintance with Taiwanese families in California, fostered by offering English language tutoring, I learned some Mandarin Chinese and visited Taiwan. There is a young woman named Wen-Ting in California, whom I have known since she was only eight when her mother died of lung cancer, who became the daughter of my heart. Though no one has ever mistaken me for a Chinese woman, I was changed by my relationship with Wen-Ting. This is not the only relationship that has changed my sense of self.

From 2003 to 2004, I studied Swedish in California. I am glad I did so because when I moved to the Chicago area to teach at Wheaton College, I had a number of students and colleagues of Scandinavian descent, and my study of Swedish language and culture helped me to understand them better. Imagine my surprise this year when I learned that I myself have Scandinavian blood in my veins!

I also have been studying biblical Hebrew for a few years now, and my desire to learn the language grew out of a deep love of the Hebrew Bible and of my friend Dafna Ezran, whose father, an orthodox rabbi, looked at the two of us laughing together on the evening of her wedding years ago and said, “The two of you must be sisters!” When I sing in Hebrew, it is as if something new, a new life, is being born in my spirit.

Although it turns out that I am not Cherokee, I have studied a little bit of the Cherokee language, listened to Cherokee songs, and taught Cherokee history in literature courses – even written poetry in my book, Rising: Poems for America, about Cherokee creation stories. I’ve been around a Cherokee woman my entire life, Stacey. Her father was Cherokee and her extended family lived on Indian reservations. I met Stacey when I was five and she was seven. She’s been my life-long friend, and we’re consistently mistaken for sisters whenever we’re together. There is something similar in our human DNA, and there is certainly something similar in our blood since we exchanged it with each other when we were kids. Stacey is part of my family, and I am a part of hers.

Understanding my ethnic identity has been a journey, the routes of which were not, I think, predetermined. There are more places from the past that I must visit in the future, I know, to understand my self and my family better. Experience certainly has taught me that ethnic identity is genetically inherited, socially constructed, and personally determined. However, I believe that God is the one who has given me the gift of my genetic inheritance, the gift of the social, cultural, national, and international experiences that have shaped my identity, and the gift of freedom to make the choices about my ethnic identity that have opened up world after world to me. There is a greater spiritual reality that has made me who I am.

As a Christian, I believe that I am a child of God: He made me who I am; He brought me into being. His paternity cannot be discovered in my DNA, but the very existence of my DNA reveals Him as my designer. My true birthrights are from Him.